NLF Update 7/27

I manage the greenhouse and planting, we both do a share of the marketing, but it is Mike who really manages our weeds.

Instead of using chemicals to kill everything except our chosen crop, we rely on a broad range of strategies to curb the growth of unwanted plants and allow our veggies to flourish. We use biodegradable plastic and landscape fabric to suppress weeds where we have plants growing now. We plant cover crops and bare fallow patches of land- cultivating weeds weekly, knocking them back each time that they germinate- to suppress weeds where we will grow later in the season or in future years.

Mike has been using our walking tractor a lot, either dragging metal sweeps through the soil, cutting weeds down, or hilling soil up around our crops, throwing the dirt on top of emerging weeds. We use these first methods as often as we can, ideally each week, and have been able to keep most of the weeds in check.

For the last remaining weeds, growing right in our plant rows, we must turn to slower, simpler and more accurate methods. We turn to our hoes and our hands, scraping weeds away methodically or pulling at them sporadically as we see them